Rejuvenating A Broken Heart

The forest. A soldier is running towards Nir and Rain.

The soldier is fully armored. His rage is very visual. He is running with his sword outside the sheath. It’s very obvious this means trouble.

Nir grabs Rain’s hand and says: “Let’s get the hell out of here!” He starts running with her in the opposite direction to the soldier.

-”Out of where? The forest?”

-”At the very least - out of his vision”.

-”His vision?” - Rain asks. “Will we be able to lose him? Won’t he just follow us, even if we get out of the forest altogether?” She suggests. They keep running.

-”Yes. If we manage to lose him for a while, we might be safe, whether we leave the forest or not. Then we can decide what to do next”. - Nir answers, trying to balance replying to her with breathing steadily as they are running.

-”Let’s turn here, to the right!” - Rain says.

Nir immediately listens and leads to the right.

“Now left!” - She says. Nir leads to the left, not letting go of her hand.

-”Why turn specifically there?” - Nir asks.

-”Doesn’t have to be there. We need to lose him, right?”

Nir looks at her, developing a smile despite the situation they are in. She seems a little bit unfazed by the entire scenario, almost smiling too.

“Turn here!” - She keeps giving directions and he follows. “Here!” - She says, as they turn and find themselves at a cliff.

They look back and see the soldier is right on their track.

-”We didn’t lose him…” - Nir acknowledges in disappointment.

-”How did I miss the fact it’s a cliff?” - Rain asks herself.

-”I thought it’s just some higher ground too. Don’t beat yourself up about it, let’s think rationally”. - Nir tries to calm her down.

-”Rationally… We may have to combat him”. - She answers.

The soldier slows down. He approaches carefully step after step, and suddenly changes pace and charges.

-”Rain! Stand behind me!” - Nir yells. Rain immediately positions herself behind him. She notices how high the cliff is and is being careful in her steps. As the soldier swings, charging right in, Nir draws his sword and parries the attack.

The soldier jumps a distance back and charges back in yet again. He seems angry but calculated. His targeting them doesn’t make much sense to them.

The soldier lands the attack on Nir’s sword, but now with more force. Nir, however, isn’t getting pushed by the attack and instead the soldier can’t fully stop his advancing and is being pushed slightly to Nir and Rain’s side, closer to the cliff.

They cannot take advantage of this to run since if they show their backs to him he can get them from behind.

Nir takes the initiative and swings his sword at the soldier rapidly. The soldier parries the first swing, but Nir is faster with the second one, hitting the soldier’s side. However, his armor is the only thing that gets hit and he takes no damage.

The soldier realizes he can get in even further because of the armor difference between them. He charges rapidly with multiple swings but Nir manages to parry all of them, as he is quite nimble without any armor.

Nir and the soldier are slightly rotating their positions. “Rain, get away from the cliff!” - He tells her, while they have the chance.

The soldier attacks rapidly and Nir parries. Nir tries attacking rapidly but any hit that he gets in is just blocked by the armor instead. Every time this happens the soldier just goes in to dominate with his overwhelming defence. Nir is starting to get out of balance parrying all of his swings.

Nir then jumps back a distance, as he saw the soldier doing that earlier, but instead of just charging with force, he is focusing. An odd aura appears within what may be his very presence. It is visibly red and is slightly reflected in his eyes. He then charges in quickly with much more force than before, and the heart above his head, that contains that very red color as his aura is seen to Rain as physically cracked for a second, then it immediately rejuvenates while the number inside drops by 1 from “18” to “17”.

The swing hits aggressively, cracking the soldier’s armor at the spot it hit.

-”Nir! Your heart! Did you see that?” - She asks.

-”What? What are you talking about?”

-”You… Lost a heart or something!” - She tries to inform him mid battle, not sure herself what this means.

The soldier attempts to swing rapidly again. Nir parries a few of the swings and then jumps back, trying to pull the same move from before.

He manages to focus the same as before and quickly unleashes a barrage of swings. Each one hits forcefully. Each one penetrates his chest armor, seemingly as if it was made of plastic. Each one makes him sacrifice a heart.

Nir swings again and again and Rain yells:” Nir! you are losing too many hearts!”

He manages to barely understand what she may mean by that, but he keeps swinging.

“Nir! You only have 2 hearts! You have to finish this!”

As the soldier is being pushed around completely, Nir swings a final blow, reducing his heart to “1”, while shattering the soldier’s armor completely, dealing the full force of damage and slaying him.

Rain is in shock. Nir is completely shocked too. His heart suddenly rejuvenates to “18” again.

“Nir, your heart! It got back to…”

They suddenly hear noise from within the forest. Someone is rushing in their direction. Nir points his sword in that direction, terrified of the thought of fighting another person.

Then, from that direction - comes running the same man who has found them in the forest the other day.

“Oh! It’s you guys! I did ask myself where you ended up going to. Who would have thought you were heading to the forest to fight more soldiers for us!” - He claims proudly in their name. “You should join our military school”.

Nir and Rain follow him back to the village. They walk slightly behind him.

Rain leans towards Nir and whispers: “I’m sorry I couldn’t do anything”.

-”It’s okay. If you tried shooting you may have hit me instead. Although, then we would have been even”. - He says, smiling at her.

Rain suddenly seems distant. She did not like that joke.

They keep walking quietly saying nothing.

They get to the village, and the man runs towards the elder standing by the entrance. They are seen talking for a while as Nir and Rain standing next to each other, observing them, still saying nothing to each other.

The man returns to them and says: “I talked to our elder. She agreed you can join our military school. I didn’t introduce myself yet. My name is Null. I actually teach sword fighting in our school. Albeit, I’m not quite gifted so I teach well instead of being able to fight well, hoping those I teach will be able to fight in my stead. How about you two get some rest and come tomorrow to check it out? How old are you two?”

Nir and Rain look at each other. -”We are 18”. - Nir answers.

-”There will be plenty of others around your age. It’s right over there, a few blocks behind your cabin”. - Null says, as he points in the direction of the school. He then just leaves, as they aren’t being very talkative.

Rain starts walking towards their cabin and Nir immediately follows.

They enter. Nir closes the door after them. Rain gets to her room and Nir follows, preparing to sleep on the floor.

-”What do you think? Want to check out their school?” - Nir asks.

-”Yea. We need to get a good night’s sleep”.

-”Roger that”. - Nir says, believing it’s the end of the conversation.

-”What are you doing?” - Rain asks him.

-”Going to… Sleep?”

-”Come sleep on the bed. There’s enough space for two here. We need to be sharp from now on”.

Nir doesn’t say a thing. He just gets up, goes around the bed in order to hop on it from the other side. As he does, Rain turns to the opposite direction - facing away from him while giving him more space.

He stares at the ceiling a bit. He then turns towards her, staring at her back. He stays like that for a while. Eventually, he turns to the other direction and they fall asleep back to back.